Just curious, how much perl do I really need to learn to be able to develop simple plug ins for the software?

Things like Active Topics ( on UBB / vB )?

I'm also interested in developing a country tracker which tracks which posts are being clicked / forums being used / links being viewed from particular countries.

I've got most of these things working in PHP but am looking very closely at a perl based site, because of Gossamer software and BuildAcommunity software.

Regards,
Shri

If you already know PHP pretty well, then you should be able to pick up on Perl quickly. As far as plugins are concerned, the complexity of the plugin system is also a factor.

--Philip
Links 2.0 moderator

Hi,

I would start with learning how to do simple tasks with Globals. Globals are just perl snippets. Have a look at existing globals, and the perl documentation included in the admin help. Most of the tasks can be done in just a few lines of code, and are quite easy to do.

Once you get the hang of that, you can move on to plugins. Plugins should be used if you want to distribute your changes easily, or need to override some core GForum function.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Any book recommendations on picking up perl?

Start with Learning Perl (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lperl3/) if you have no programming background. If you are familiar with programming in another language, then Programming Perl is a good reference.

Cheers,

Alex
--
Gossamer Threads Inc.

Just picked up "Perl" Black Book by Steven Holzner. Looks like a complete reference.

Will play around with the demo of gforum over the weekend to see how comfortable I can get with it.